Riverside Poly High School student Melissa Soria, 17, works on signs for a March 14th student walkout against gun violence at Andulka Park in Riverside Friday, March 9, 2018. FRANK BELLINO, For THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Riverside Poly High School students work on signs for a March 14th student walkout against gun violence at Andulka Park in Riverside Friday, March 9, 2018. FRANK BELLINO, For THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Riverside Poly High School student Ayanna Johnson, 17, works on signs for a March 14th student walkout against gun violence at Andulka Park in Riverside Friday, March 9, 2018. FRANK BELLINO, For THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Riverside Poly High School’s Melissa Soria, 17, (right) works on signs with students for a March 14th student walkout against gun violence at Andulka Park in Riverside Friday, March 9, 2018. FRANK BELLINO, For THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Riverside Poly High School students work on signs for a March 14th student walkout against gun violence at Andulka Park in Riverside Friday, March 9, 2018. FRANK BELLINO, For THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

While they may not agree on specific solutions, thousands of students who plan to walk out of schools around Southern California on Wednesday are hoping their activism will spur adults and lawmakers to do something – anything – to stem gun violence.

“I wasn’t even alive when Columbine happened,” said Annie Davis, 18, who is helping organize a walkout at Riverside’s Poly High School, noting that the Columbine massacre, which claimed 15 lives, took place in 1999.

“Yet, somehow, the effects of that one event are my problem now.”

The nationwide school walkout is scheduled exactly one month after another school massacre — the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a gunman shot and killed 17 people, most of them students.

Authorities have charged Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student of the school, with 34 counts of murder and attempted murder. On Thursday, he changed his plea from not guilty to standing mute, which means he’ll accept a sentence without admitting guilt.

Since the shooting, Stoneman Douglas’s teen survivors have become activists, and students around the country have taken a cue from them.

17 minutes

While some student organizers may be adding their own twists, most walkouts are expected to follow the same basic template, created by a youth organizing arm of the Women’s March: participating students will leave class at 10 a.m. and not return for at least 17 minutes – one minute for each Parkland victim.

A number of protests will have student speakers or discussions about gun violence. Some also will pay tribute to victims by wearing T-shirts bearing their names, releasing balloons in their honor, or writing condolence letters to their families.

Others plan to call or write to their legislators or encourage students to register to vote, or pre-register if they’re not yet 18.

At least 250 students at Anaheim’s Canyon High School will hold a “lie-in” on the campus quad, where students will lie on the ground to represent all young people killed by gun violence, said organizer Jasmine Nguyen, a 16-year-old junior.

“We want to keep this demonstration as peaceful as possible,” she said.

The bulk of participating students are in high school, but a number of college and junior high students and even elementary school parents have events planned Wednesday. In Long Beach, for example, parents at Fremont Elementary will surround the school while holding hands with their children to show “support and solidarity for the students who have experienced this sort of violence,” said Jill Parker, whose two daughters attend the school.

Most school officials say they’ll remain neutral, not supporting or opposing planned demonstrations, but they’re encouraging kids not to leave campus during the walkout. A number of organizers said they’ll honor that request.

“Essentially we support students’ right to peaceful assembly and free expression, but school is about teaching and learning as a priority,” so the usual expectations for student behavior will remain in place, Long Beach Unified School District spokesman Chris Eftychiou said.

Districts aren’t likely to lose state attendance-based funding because of the walkout “unless a student missed the entire day,” state Superintendent Tom Torlakson wrote in a memo to school administrators.

While many students are communicating with teachers and principals about their plans, some have been frustrated with what they see as adults’ attempts to control their protest.

Riverside Poly administrators have “kind of really taken over the walkout in a sense, and they put a lot of regulations in place in terms of how long it’s supposed to be,” Poly High senior Isabel Washington, 17, said.

Riverside Unified board member Tom Hunt said the board and district support students in standing up for their beliefs. But he added this: “We want to remind them that what they’re doing breaks the rules (in the state education code). … We’re just trying to give them some guidelines.”

Mixed reactions

Some student organizers say they’ve received broad support from their peers for the walkout.

Ian McPherson, a 16-year-old junior at Valley View High in Moreno Valley, said up to 900 students are expected to participate, or roughly a third of the school’s enrollment of 2,600.

At Riverside Poly, “Even students that don’t necessarily support gun control still want to be involved in trying to make their school safer,” Davis said.

But in other schools, the planned walkout has been divisive.

Salina Chin, a 16-year-old junior at Aliso Viejo’s Aliso Niguel High School, said organizers have struggled to keep social media posts non-partisan so people don’t retreat to their ideological silos. For some students, she said, “Whenever they see the word ‘gun,’ the issue immediately becomes polarized.”

Walkout supporters have also tempered their message at Yucaipa High School in Yucaipa, where voters in November 2016 chose President Trump at a rate of 2 to 1.

“Instead of saying that this walkout is more for gun reform or for a bigger-scale change, we moved to something more local and are advocating for better (safety) protocols at our school,” said Hilary Gil, a 16-year-old sophomore.

Individually, some students said they believe stricter gun laws or a more robust mental health care system could help lessen mass shooting incidents.

Jackson Hinkle, an 18-year-old senior at San Clemente High School, said he’d like to see the U.S. implement background checks for all gun buyers and a gun buyback program to reduce the number of weapons in circulation.

“The systems in place aren’t doing their job, so yeah, gun regulations are what the majority of students want to see in our school,” he said.

Most students said they want to see real dialogue about gun violence and school safety – and an end to elected officials’ stalemate on the issue.

“I would hope that people can realize that it’s not necessarily a partisan issue,” said Claire Jacobs, a 17-year-old senior at Huntington Beach High School.

“A school shooter is not simply going to be aiming at a Democrat’s child or a Republican’s child. It affects all of us.”

Pressing for change

In some districts, administrators have taken their own steps regarding school safety.

Orange Unified School District recently held an already planned active shooter response training for parents. Fontana Unified put on a community safety forum that district spokesman Michael Garcia said drew more than 200 parents.

Fontana district officials are encouraging everyone to wear orange on Wednesday as a show of support for students, Garcia said, and they’re designing a “we care” card, with counseling and mental health resources for students in distress.

Some district administrators said they’ll have extra security on campus for the walkouts, and several organizers said officials expressed concern about students’ safety at the events.

Schools may need to continue their vigilance, because Wednesday’s demonstrations aren’t likely to be the last. The March for Our Lives, which calls for an end to mass shootings in schools, will take place March 24 in Washington, D.C., and around the country, and students are also discussing plans for a walkout April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Ultimately, several Southern California students said, they hope this movement is the beginning of real change. They also said they want elected officials to know they plan to make their voices heard by voting as soon as they’re eligible.

Alicia Robinson covers Anaheim for The Orange County Register. She previously spent 10 years at The Press-Enterprise writing about Riverside and local government as well as Norco, Corona, homeless issues, Alzheimer's disease, streetcars, butterflies, horses and chickens. She grew up in the Midwest but earned Southern California native status during many hours spent in traffic. Two big questions Alicia tries to answer in stories about government are: how is it supposed to work, and how is it working?

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